Imbolc is the Wiccan and Pagan Sabbat that marks the first stirrings of spring, kept around 1-2 February, at the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, one of the four "cross-quarter" fire festivals of the Wheel of the Year. It celebrates the quickening of the year: the first signs of new life, the lengthening light, and, in its pastoral origin, the lambing and the coming of ewes' milk. Practitioners light candles and small fires to welcome the strengthening sun, perform rites of purification and cleansing of the home and self, and bless seeds and tools for the coming agricultural season.
The festival takes its name and much of its character from the Gaelic Imbolc, one of the four seasonal festivals of medieval Ireland, and it is strongly associated with Brigid, the goddess of poetry, healing and smithcraft who became, in Christian Ireland, Saint Brigid, whose feast falls on the same 1 February; the woven Brigid's cross and customs around her belong to this overlap, which sits close to the Christian Candlemas of 2 February. Modern practitioners honour Brigid and treat the day as a festival of renewal, hope and the return of light, a first promise of spring kept while winter still holds, drawing on the Irish tradition within the framework of the modern eightfold Wheel.